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Justin Kan

3 Dec, 9 tweets, 3 min read

@mattieuga

I talked to my friend @mattieuga from @altopharmacy on @the_quest_pod this week.

Here's how he built a unicorn digital pharmacy serving tens of thousands with 800 employees and raised $350m after starting out of my living room 5 years ago:

[A thread]

I met Matt & Jamie in 2015 when they were engineers at Facebook. They wanted to start a co, but wanted the assurance of raising $ before quitting their day jobs.

I asked them how anyone would believe in the founders if they didn't believe in themselves. They quit FB the next day

After a few weeks delivering prescriptions from my living room, Matt decided they needed to own a pharmacy to build something better. So he started walking into pharmacies in SF and asking if he could buy them.

He actually found one: AG Pharmacy in the Mission.

AG was 1500 sq ft and super grimy.

The pharmacy had been accumulating junk since the 60s. Silverfish were falling off the ceiling. The team found lambskin condoms that expired 40 years ago.

The engineers eventually moved into an abandoned doctor's office next door that was so cold they called it Canada. The office was about to be turned into condos, and homeless people had previously taken it over. But it was very, very cheap.

Even though these wasn't an ideal working environment, it turned out to be important because it got the team to understand what running a pharmacy was like.

Through sheer grit, Alto grew and made it out of that first pharmacy.

But it wasn't easy. For Matt, the rollercoaster was always at the bottom.

The company has been weeks away from cash out multiple times in its life.

Somewhere on the way, Matt found peace in meditation.

Right before raising a $250m round with SoftBank, he went on to a meditation retreat. After coming back with a clear mind, Matt spoke for 4 hours w/o slides. He closed the deal 3 days after.

For Matt, the lesson has been: building million-dollar companies doesn't get rid of past hurt or pain, or the perpetual feeling of inadequacy.

Listen to the full podcast here: buff.ly/3fZzsf0

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More from @justinkan

Justin Kan

@justinkan

12 Nov

A friend who just started a company texted me last night and asked:

"What's the best piece of advice you have for me?

What do you wish someone told you when you were running these companies?"

Here's what I answered

Work on yourself:

Meditation, therapy, exercise, get good mentors, find a network of founders at your level

Every hour you put into yourself will pay huge dividends in the long run

Don’t worry about goals or outcomes, only worry about building a framework for directional progress

You don’t control the outputs, you only control the inputs

Read 5 tweets

Justin Kan

@justinkan

2 Oct

I just fasted for five days (120 hours). No food, just water, coffee, and electrolytes. I did zero preparation; I only decided to do it the day I started.

Here’s what I learned about myself:

Hunger is in the mind. Most of us eat compulsively out of habit, not because we need to.

After 3 days, hunger subsided and I started to feel very calm.

Days stretched out and felt much slower. We don’t realize how much time we spend eating.

Read 9 tweets

Justin Kan

@justinkan

8 Aug

One thing that is working well for me recently: Internal Family Systems.

IFS is a therapy system that proposes the mind is composed of multiple “parts”. These parts represent different personalities, emotions and motivations.

By recognizing these parts of ourselves we can better understand our own mind. Often we have elevated or repressed parts because of challenging experiences. Ex: I have a part that desperately wants to be approved of by others, because I felt like an outsider w my peers growing up

Eventually that part of me that needed approval became dominant as I grew into an adult.

Often we want to reject parts of ourselves that seem “bad.” Who wants to go around seeking the approval of others? That’s fucking thirsty.

Read 8 tweets

Justin Kan

@justinkan

22 Dec 19

It’s been a wild ten years for me. Here’s a bunch of things I’ve learned in the last decade:

Things that seem disastrous at the time can happen for a reason.

Some of my most important learnings came from failures that I thought were the end of the world in the moment.

The most important success factor in your work is who you choose to work with.

This has been more important to my success than having the right idea, the right resources, or anything else. Having the right people around you is the difference between success and failure.

No matter where you are at, you are probably giving up too early. Big things take time to succeed at.

Read 11 tweets

Justin Kan

@justinkan

12 Dec 19

Startups sustain hyper-growth and maximize the yield of their spend by playing to their strengths and knowing their limitations at each stage.

Early-stage startup limitations
-Seed: product, brand
-Series A: GTM, messaging, process

To overcome limitations at seed stage:
-Treat customers like partners
-Only spend on sales/mktg when you have to

Read 5 tweets

Justin Kan

@justinkan

21 Nov 19

The first thing founders should do when they think they're ready to fundraise is lock down the narrative of their startup.

I specifically start with the narrative and not a pitch deck because investors invest in (and employees join, and journalists write about) compelling stories.

@spakhm

The best tip I ever got on narratives was from @spakhm that every major story in human history follows this same arc:
- The world is a certain way
- Something changes
- The world is now different

May seem obvious but that’s what makes it effective - and memorable.

Read 6 tweets

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